Chapter 8: Childhood(4)

“That should be enough…”

I shook off the dust from my clothes with my unusually light hand and stood up.

Whoever the dark mage controlling these men was, this should serve as a sufficient warning.

But if, despite this threat, they dare to target Lia again with their schemes, I’ll track them down and make sure they can’t even open their mouths.

…No, wait. Why leave them alive at all?

This cult and their so-called “Him” are part of a backstory not mentioned in the original story—a complete unknown.

I don’t know their scale or how much of a threat they pose, so it might be better to hunt them down and eradicate them entirely.

“…Should I just go and cut their heads off?”

I muttered to myself, and—flinch—I felt someone beyond the man shudder, as if trembling in fear.

I paused in front of the severed head, contemplating.

Should I track down the mastermind and uproot them entirely, or not?

To eliminate future threats, is it worth leaving Lia’s side even briefly?

As I wiped the blood off my blade, weighing my options, Lia grabbed my sleeve.

“N-No, Cain…!”

“Huh? No to what?”

“You said you’d cut their heads off—that’s not okay! D-Defiling corpses… it’s against etiquette!”

“…What?”

What is she talking about? I thought, then noticed her pointing at the man’s corpse with her index finger.

Oh, does Lia think I meant I’d cut the corpse’s head off again?

Sure, my words lacked context, so she might’ve misunderstood, but I’m not so depraved as to mutilate a corpse.

Besides, their heads are already severed—there’s nothing left to cut.

“C-Corpses should be buried properly. You can’t just hack at them, Cain!”

“Oh… yeah, got it. I won’t.”

Explaining would take too long, so I just nodded.

Hearing my response, Lia sighed in relief, her hand on her chest.

But her relief was short-lived as she glanced at the scattered corpses and severed heads, her face growing fearful again.

She sidled up to me, clinging tightly.

Noticing her unease, I—thud—kicked a nearby head far away.

Lia didn’t seem to notice, tugging at my sleeve as she spoke.

“Cain, who… who were these people?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure, but…”

Trailing off, I glanced at the head that had rolled into the distance.

Pale, bloodless skin, a grotesquely distorted nose and mouth. Its hideous appearance delayed my realization, but…

“They mentioned a cult and someone called ‘Him,’ and they wanted to make you a sacrificial offering. So, probably… apostles serving an evil god?”

“An evil god…? What’s that, Cain…?”

Startled, Lia asked cautiously.

Her expression was so childlike for a ten-year-old that I couldn’t help but chuckle.

I put my boots back on and surveyed the scattered corpses.

First, I should correct my slip into informal speech.

“You know there are many gods in this world, right?”

The gods I mentioned aren’t the omnipotent deities of religion, like a creator, but real entities that exist and exert influence on the world.

Since Lia recently learned this from her tutor, she nodded quickly.

“Yeah, I know. You mean like Lady Venus or Lord Solar, right?”

“Yes, exactly. Lady Venus, who governs love, or Lord Solar, who governs the sun—they’re gods, right? They’re benevolent gods who bring positive influence to the world. In simple terms, they’re the good ones.”

Discussing the morality of gods from a human perspective is foolish, but explaining it philosophically would take days.

“…I see. So, evil gods harm people, which makes them bad. The god these people serve is a bad one, then?”

“Yes, exactly. Evil gods.”

I’m not certain if this “Him” they serve is an actual god, but since they have a cult and spoke of offering Lia as a sacrifice, it’s reasonable to assume it’s some kind of deity.

Of course, it might not be a god. But does that really matter?

What matters now is that these mysterious figures targeted Lia, might target her again, and that could trigger her transformation into a villainess.

In other words, for me—who wants to see Lia grow up safely into the empire’s greatest beauty—the existence of this shady cult is a thorn in my side.

“…Hmm.”

As I pondered how to dismantle them, tap tap.

Lia patted my shoulder.

“But, Cain, what do we do with… not these people, but these corpses? Are we just leaving them here?”

“No, we need to clean up.”

“…Clean up?”

“Yes, clean up.”

Obviously, even nobles can’t just kill people without consequences.

This world has laws and trials. If it’s discovered I killed ten grown men, I’d likely face a hefty fine or some punishment, even if it was self-defense.

As Lia’s escort knight, I can’t let such a scandal tarnish my name.

So, I gathered the headless bodies and their heads at the base of the hill. Stacking the corpses and piling ten heads on top created a gruesome sight.

“Cain, I’m scared… It feels like the corpses are staring at me…!”

“They actually are.”

“…Eek!”

I teased her a bit, and Lia clung to me even tighter.

To reassure her, I patted her head and spoke softly.

“Lady Lia, don’t be scared yet. There’s something you need to do.”

“Something I need to do?”

“Yes. You recently learned the basics of fire elemental magic, right?”

“Y-Yeah, I did…?”

“Now’s the time to put that learning into practice. Go ahead, Lady Lia, use your magic to set this pile of corpses on fire.”

“S-Set them on fire?!”

Lia gasped, staring at me wide-eyed.

Her already large eyes widened further in shock at my sudden request, but I responded calmly, as if it were the most natural thing.

“Yes, Lady Lia. No need to be scared. These guys tried to harm you, didn’t they?”

“W-Well, that’s true, but…”

“Think about it, Lady Lia. If I hadn’t been here, they would’ve kidnapped you as a sacrificial offering. You might not even be in this world anymore. These are vile people. There’s no need for you to pity them.”

“S-So that’s how it is? I don’t need to feel bad, Cain…?”

“No, not at all. Why should you feel bad? If anything, they should be grateful to you. If they’d lived, they’d only cause harm. Thanks to you, they’re becoming fertilizer for a better world. They’d probably thank you even in death.”

“O-Okay. If you say so, Cain…”

Gulp. Lia swallowed hard and extended her right hand.

“…F-Fire!”

With a cute, ten-year-old’s voice, a small spark shot from her delicate fingertips. It quickly grew into a round orb and ignited the pile of corpses.

Boom, whoosh!

The flames roared louder, and the smell of burning flesh mixed with acrid smoke filled the air around us.

We stepped back a few paces, watching the impromptu cremation.

…And about ten minutes later, we realized something was wrong.

“Um, Cain, how long does it take for the bodies to burn completely…?”

“To burn them to ashes… at about 1000 degrees, it’d take at least two hours.”

“T-Two hours? There’s so much black smoke rising already—won’t people come running before then…?”

“Yes, you’re right. I might’ve miscalculated.”

I’d never burned a human body before, so I didn’t know, but even on Earth, cremating a body took hours.

Think about crematoriums—even with intense heat, it takes at least two hours.

A spark from magic, less powerful, would take even longer.

At a minimum, probably three hours.

And in three hours, the black smoke from burning bodies would draw every villager here.

Realizing this, I grabbed Lia’s hand.

“Lady Lia.”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go.”

“W-What? Run away? But what about the bodies?”

“Don’t worry. We’ve burned them enough that no one can trace the sword marks back to us.”

“Oh, I see. So we can just… ah!”

As Lia started walking, still holding my hand, her body stumbled.

I quickly moved, catching her waist just before she fell.

“Lady Lia, are you okay?”

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine, but… my body feels weird, Cain.”

“Your body? Where exactly, and how does it feel?”

“It’s like… all the strength in my body is draining away…”

“All your strength is draining away…?”

There’s one thing that comes to mind with those symptoms: mana exhaustion, a condition caused by overusing mana. But that doesn’t make sense.

Lia’s just a ten-year-old kid and a novice mage.

Producing a single spark shouldn’t cause mana exhaustion.

Which means there’s an external factor I’m unaware of… but what?

As I pondered, my gaze caught something at the edge of my vision: a gap in Lia’s clothing, revealing her slender neck.

On the back of her neck was a thumb-sized, inverted black clover mark.

“…”

The moment I saw it, a chilling sense of déjà vu hit me.

I recognized that black clover mark.

In the original story, driven by her intense hatred for the protagonist Stella, the villainess Lia von Elevess gave her a necklace imbued with the Curse of Misfortune, symbolized by this mark.

In the story, this Curse of Misfortune wasn’t supposed to appear until Lia was eighteen.

…Yet here it was, etched onto the ten-year-old Lia.